


Helplessness

by Raphiael



Category: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: F/M, Gen, Introspection, Mindfuck, Rinoa Is Ultimecia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-25
Updated: 2012-05-25
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raphiael/pseuds/Raphiael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Throughout her life, Rinoa attempts to defy destiny. In the end, her success is her own downfall. Runs off the "Rinoa is Ultimecia" theory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Helplessness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stealth_Noodle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stealth_Noodle/gifts).



> For Stealth_Noodle, for FF Exchange 2012. The prompt I chose was "Ultimecia doesn't get a whole lot of canon motivation, backstory, or much of anything, really, so I'd love to see some fanwork that delves into her. Anything that explores her character or the surreal strangeness of her time compression would be awesome. Fic that makes sense of it all or just revels in playing with language! Art that celebrates the psychedelic weirdness of time getting squashed! GO WILD. I have a big soft spot for the 'Rinoa becomes Ultimecia' theory, so if you share my fondness, feel very free to play with that. " 
> 
> I've never really done anything serious for FF before, so I hope this worked out all right. I really wanted to capture the fragmented state of Ultimecia/Rinoa's memories, the sporadic bursts of time she'd experience, and the chaos of her entire situation, and I thought the best way to do that would be in the narrative snippets used in this fic. I was intentionally vague about the events leading up to the "transformation" of sorts, as I didn't want to go too much into the Squall aspect, but you can feel free to fill in whatever theory fits for you. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

“ _This is reality. No one can help you. Sit back and enjoy the show.”_

 

It was by the light of fires that she made her decision, by the sound of screams that she made her choice. Never again would she stand powerless. Never again would her life, her time, be dictated by the whims of anyone else. She was a sorceress, after all, and power, ultimate power, lay at her hands. Who were they to stop her?

She was beyond revenge, no. She would unmake everything, remake it to suit her. And should anyone object, she would see them crushed beneath her feet.

* * *

_Destiny._

It was a word that held little meaning for Rinoa, save for something she planned on avoiding. After all, what use was there in living if all her life amounted to was a slow, sad march into the inevitable? No, her choices were own, her actions hers and hers alone. No unseen hand would push her forward. She would take hold of her life and steer it to her plans. No one else's.

And so it was Rinoa who filled her designer rucksack with just enough clothing to get by and nothing of sentiment, Rinoa who scrawled out a note expounding on all of her grievances and left it on the polished mahogany of her writing desk, Rinoa who slipped out of her father's house dressed like anyone but a general's daughter and caught the next taxi out of Deling City, onto a life she had made herself.

* * *

She didn't set the fires herself. Those weren't hers. They belonged to someone else, to the screaming mobs below her, the ones who wanted her dead and had settled for a knight instead.

_I'll protect you. No matter what._

The words were lost to her, much like the embers rising up out of her sight and into the ether. The magic she felt surging just behind her fingertips was blindingly bright and endlessly potent, but even it could not wind back the wheels of time.

* * *

“SeeD. We'll hire SeeD, that's what we'll do.”

Rinoa remembered her father talking about them, the mercenaries who'd do near anything for the right amount. It had struck her as dishonorable at the time – what sort of soldiers played at being elite, exclusive, while acting worse than even the worst Galbadian thugs? – but the Timber Owls seemed fond enough of the idea, and it would suit their goals well in the end.

And despite herself, despite the twinge of innocent, naïve girl left within her that wanted to say “do your own work, you can do this on your own, don't be a coward, don't hide behind someone else”, there was something enchanting to the idea of willing someone else to work for her end, pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

For an innocent moment, Rinoa fancied herself a puppet master, the dictator of not only her own fate but those of the people around her. Though it left her as quickly as it came, for just that instant, she felt almost truly satisfied.

* * *

_If I cannot change the past, then I will master it._

It was a simple idea, somehow, despite the absurdity of it. Even one with her power could not “master” what had already happened. Just the thought was madness.

But it could be no more mad than a crowd of people shrieking for the downfall of a “witch”, taking the one thing she had left, robbing her of all that had kept her from reaching further into the power that had once threatened to consume her.

Before, when it sang to her in the dead of night, she'd paid it no mind. What she had without it was too much to give up. Too much to sacrifice.

Standing above the fires, out of the reach of those who challenged her, she had nothing left to lose.

_If I go too far, what then?_

There was no such thing as too far anymore.

* * *

SeeD was not as faceless as Rinoa had imagined. She had expected they might be somehow less human, as silly as it seemed in retrospect. While Squall was certainly not the most expressive person she'd ever met, he was far from the flawless, soulless soldier she had dreamed up in her head. It was charming, in a way, the way he pretended he was the “perfect” cadet, but she'd known since she met him on the dance floor that he was anything but.

Even with that, she had not envisioned herself staying with them, fighting for them, going against their wishes to help them though they didn't seem to realize it was her intent. But to their credit, they did not leave her behind – for a moment she felt as if she might deserve it, when the gift of the charmed bracelet fell to the floor with a clatter and she stared her own death in the face. _What a foolish girl,_ she heard in her head, and somehow it didn't quite sound like her own voice.

Up until that point, everything had seemed like a silly game, with her as the player and the mercenaries as her pawns. It all seemed so cruel in hindsight, so stupid and so cruel. She was no better than the dead-eyed sorceress standing overhead, raising her hand almost lazily, stretching her long, slender fingers around the spear of ice that materialized just above her hand and letting it fly toward the man Rinoa had imagined might be her hero –

Rinoa heard herself scream as she watched Squall fall, though whether it was because she was sure he was dead or because she knew she had no power to save him, she'd never be able to say.

* * *

The compression of time had come to her like a hazy dream, like something she remembered a stranger tell her offhand. She was sure there was more to it, that there was some meaning to the dread that gnawed at her thoughts when she considered it, but she shook the thoughts off. Surely, it was just a remnant of the uncertain girl she had been, the girl afraid to take the reins of her own life and steer it to fit her ambitions.

It would not take long. She knew where to find the tools she needed – they alone seemed vibrant in her mind's eye, as if illuminated by some foreign light beyond even her comprehension. It had to be a sign. If there was one scrap of “destiny” she would allow in her life, that would be it.

* * *

Rinoa had always longed for power, but now that it was in her grasp, she wished she never had. She had no longing for the same fearsome magic that belonged firmly in the past, fixed in the stuff of legends. When she tried to understand it, all that came to mind was the cold, dead eyes of Sorceress Edea on the night of the parade, the chilling sensation running up her own body as she fell under the control of another.

_You're not really in control of anything, are you?_

She wasn't. Everything she had been through, everything she had seen, it was all pulled together by someone else's hand. She'd never had anything in her grasp, after all. Were it not for sorcery, she would still be fragile and powerless. Were it not for Galbadia, she'd have had no cause at all. And were it not for Squall, she'd still be floating in space, watching as her home slipped out of view.

_How very helpless._

* * *

Past, present, future. Three spaces of time strung together into one, like glass beads passed through with a needle. She couldn't recall much of the past proper any longer, but the shards of it that came together around her castle collected into something she thought she could recognize. It was like a dream she'd had countless times before, fragmented, vague, but somehow intimately familiar. Hers.

Like a bit of a half-remembered song stuck in the back of her mind, the words of something – a prophecy? a folk tale? a rumor? – came to her –  _legendary SeeD destined to defeat a sorceress_ – 

and in the face of it, she laughed outright, as she had not in years.

For there was no such thing as destiny, not if she went back and destroyed it entirely.

* * *

When they had finally reached the height of the castle, Rinoa wondered if after everything, it had all been predestined, orchestrated by this witch throughout time and space. If her entire life had been nothing but a dance at the end of someone else's strings.

If it was that, after all, she would end it right there. She would cut down the conductor with her own gifts and take back the reins of her life. And if she should fail, it would be on her own terms and no one else's.

_I won't be bound by destiny any longer,_ she thought as she met the other sorceress' fiery eyes, unaware that somewhere in the future, she was still believing the same thing. 


End file.
